The Montgomery County Department of Police (MCPD) is working to fully encrypt all police radio transmissions in the near future in an effort to protect public safety, according to the 3rd District Commander Jason Cokinos.
Under the current system, pre-encryption, anyone can listen to police radio communications on scanning apps like OpenMHz. After encryption is implemented, scanning apps will no longer be able to broadcast radio transmissions to the public, according to Cokinos.
“A couple of reasons behind that is to protect victim’s information — phone numbers, names, folks that call 911,” Cokinos said in a media briefing Monday. “Then also from an officer safety standpoint, there have been cases nationally where the criminal element has access to these apps to use them while engaged in crime.”
Montgomery County will follow a growing national trend of police departments encrypting their radio transmissions. One of the more recent and relevant examples is the Baltimore Police Department (BPD), who encrypted their communications in 2023 but continued to allow them to be accessed after a 15-minute delay, according to a BPD press release. It is unclear at this time whether MCPD will implement a similar practice.
In response to whether shutting down immediate access to police communications would raise transparency concerns, Cokinos said that it is a legitimate conversation to have, but that the positives of encryption are important to consider and that MCPD is not trying to keep anything from the public.
“I think intentions of encryption are coming from a good place,” Cokinos said.
After encryption is complete, police radio transmissions will continue to be recorded and made available through Maryland Public Information Act (MPIA) requests, according to reporting from Bethesda Magazine.
Photo courtesy MCPDMEDIA
